Mystery Santa's helper each year puts the red scarves on statues along I-690

Nicholas Lisi/The Post-StandardA sure sign of the holiday season in Central New York is the appearance of bright red scarves on plaster figures on a platform of the former train station along I-690 in downtown Syracuse. The public art display is called “Waiting for the Night Train.” View a photo gallery of the statuesIt’s a grand Syracuse tradition.
Dressing the plaster figures on the train platform along I-690 westbound in downtown Syracuse for the holiday season. The red scarves went on again last week.
“Yes, I’m still on the job,” the elf responsible for giving the statues red scarves admitted.
The woman who wants to be known only as “Cyndie” has been performing this civic duty anonymously for about 15 years, she figures. She says she didn’t put on the original scarves, nor does she do any of the others in orange, green or pink or the New York Yankees ponchos that have appeared over the years.
“No, that’s not me,” she said the other day.
Cyndie says the work is a lot easier than it use to be back then, when she scrambled up a hillside from Burnet Avenue to dress the statues after dark. There used to be razor wire on top of a fence that needed to be bested in darkness, using a rug. Now there’s an opening.
It’s no fun anymore, she says, “no more war stories” to tell afterwards over a beer at Shifty’s on Burnet Avenue. The landlords of the old Railroad Express building who own the platform seem very understanding.
Cyndie — a single mother of three — says she picked out a “nice, fleece fabric” which she cuts into sections for the scarves. It’s heavy-duty, she explains, and does not run, like the fabric she used to use early on.
She says she usually puts on the scarves “when the first snow sticks to the ground” and tries to take them off after the holiday season. One of the sculptors’ artists, Duke Epolito, claims he isn’t involved in giving his figures scarves “but I’m glad they do it.”
The group of local icons, seven originally, are officially called “Waiting for the Night Train.” The artists were Epolito and Larry Zankowski. The year was 1982. They said the work was done quietly, under the cover of darkness.
The sculptures were made to represent passengers waiting to catch a train along what once was the main line of the New York Central Railway. The station on the site closed in 1962. The platform is the only clue left that this was a passenger station. Time-Warner converted the actual station into offices for Channel 10 News.